


you grew up with your hand in mine

by youremyqueen



Category: Skins (UK)
Genre: Comment Fic, F/F, F/M, Multi, POV Female Character, POV Third Person, Prompt Fic, Teenagers, Threesome - F/F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-05
Updated: 2012-11-05
Packaged: 2017-11-18 01:46:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youremyqueen/pseuds/youremyqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Love' isn't just something to write songs about. It's boys out-of-jail and girls in black boots and everybody's hands in everybody else's hair.</p><p>Written for the teenage comment meme on lj, prompt was: <i>you don't care i don't care we don't care</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you grew up with your hand in mine

Pandora is a golden glow-thing, a thing on wheels, with neon lights and flashing arrows pointing straight to her smile. Effy's thoughts are a mess when she's like this, and they spin faster and faster the more she drinks, or kisses Cook, or laughs at jokes that nobody makes.

It's a beautiful ride, and Effy is the tilt-a-whirl and Cook is the smell of piss and beer behind the stands, but Panda is sugar-spun cotton candy lips and child eyes that watch, split-wide.

"You're beautiful," Effy says, more earnestly than she means to, so she ties it off with a laugh and sends it off packaged like mockery instead of adoration.

"Thanks, babe." Cook smiles his smile, but it doesn't spark and shine like Panda's, and he only says it because he knows she's not talking to him. She's never really talking to him. That's the point of him. Cook's smile is a sad thing that belongs in rooms too dark to see it. Cook's smile lives in the backseat, in happy, exhausting days that never happened. He presses it into her hair, breathes her in with his oxygen.

Panda keeps watching. She doesn't smile, but it's brighter than anything Cook and Effy could do if they tried, burning with that terrified, beautiful wonder that you get the first time you realize that 'love' isn't just something to write songs about. It's boys out-of-jail and girls in black boots and everybody's hands in everybody else's hair. Effy sucks on Cook's lower lip as she holds out a hand to Pandora.

 _Just take it,_ she thinks. _Take us_. Cook keeps touching her, makes like he doesn't care, but of course it's only because he does. He can't stop caring, is the thing, so he buries himself in her skin just to keep it all down.

Panda keeps watching, moves like she's going to wrap her fingers in Effy's, then stops. "I don't know," she says, which is ridiculous, because what is there to know?

"It doesn't matter," Effy says, and reaches forward to grab her anyway, pulling her close, presses her up against Cook's back. She kisses her on the forehead and slips a hand up her shirt. Panda lets her, eyes still wide.

Cook looks over his shoulder, smiling his dark-room smile. "That's right, Panda-pops. Doesn't matter at all, does it?"

Pandora's brow creases as Effy pulls her shirt off, arms up when she lifts it over her head, but her expression is the same when he hair falls mussed and golden glowing back down on her shoulders. "No," she says after a moment, even though she doesn't make a move to stop Effy's hand as chipped-paint nails tickle her stomach. "It matters." Her child hands come up to cup Effy by the face, and she falls laughing against Panda's lips, because she doesn't know what else to do. "It matters," Panda repeats, as they lean over Cook's shoulder.

Effy just keeps laughing until it stops being funny, until Cook slips her knickers aside and shoves in, until Panda has her tight by the face, kissing her, making sure she remembers the words. She remembers. She remembers everything.


End file.
